A Golden Thread: Reverence our Doorway to Light, Joy and Peace
As we bring light to the darkness of the Winter season, we often find ourselves drawn to moments of togetherness with loved ones—times when joy and warmth, peace and light seem to fill the air. Whether it’s through the sound of songs carrying hope and goodwill or the quiet reflections of unity and gratitude, we experience the world in a different way during this time.
Outer experiences resonate with inner meaning, bringing greater context and significance. This season invites us to pause and wonder:
How do these experiences leave us changed? What do they call forth? How do they come to us?
Is it through our thoughts, our reflections on past experiences, and the gratitude we feel for the life woven into our hearts by others and the world around us? Do these moments emerge from the connections we’ve cultivated and the memories that shape us?
Or could it be something more—a living force with its own essence, moving through us and inviting us to be its vessel? Perhaps this force flows into the world through us, transforming not only ourselves but also the spaces we inhabit, carrying with it the power to renew and inspire.
Reverence: A Doorway That Can Support Us in Everyday Moments
As a community of people with children in our lives, we hold the capacity to call upon these qualities—light, warmth, joy, and unity—at any time, in any place. They are eternal and accessible, a golden thread of existence that sustains and nourishes us.
One gateway into these profound states of being is reverence. Reverence invites us to open ourselves to a living force that flows through us and into the world. We don’t lose ourselves to the experience. Rather, we join with it with consciousness, awake and open.
David Whyte’s poem, The Opening of Eyes, beautifully captures this sense of awakening:
"It is the vision of far-off things seen for the silence they hold. It is the heart after years of secret conversation speaking out loud in the clear air."
Reverence is like a key, unlocking the doorway to meaningful encounters—with a friend, a loved one, a child, or even the natural world. When we meet life with reverence, we gain access to the mysteries and secrets of both the divine and earthly realms, deepening our connection to all that is living and supporting us.
Reverence heals, it respects, and it is light that connects us to all things. Waldorf Education strives to weave this mood, this offering of the holy, in everything we bring to the children. A child learns about how to enter this doorway and gain the experience through us.
We become carriers of the light with them.
As Winter unfolds, may we all invite reverence into our lives. May we open ourselves to the golden thread that connects us to one another and to the world.
Wishing you a wondrous and wholehearted Winter season.
That day I saw beneath dark clouds,
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out,
I knew then, as I had before,
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing,
speaking out loud in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
by David Whyte
Written in collaboration with Lisa Bono, Cedarwood’s Caregiver & Child facilitator and Early Childhood Director.